The invention relates to physical exercising apparatus and, more particularly, to cable-operated exercising apparatus which affords a variety of weight training exercises.
Cable-operated weight training equipment is well-known in the exercise equipment art. Typically, such devices comprise a vertically guided, weight-laden carriage which is lifted by a user through an arrangement of pulleys and cables. Often it is desirable to make such equipment versatile for performing many different types of exercises by providing means for exerting exercise forces in many different directions. In equipment of this type, this typically is provided by upper and lower, and sometimes intermediate pulley positions. See, for example, Small U.S. Pat. No. 403,703; Medart U.S. Pat. No. 931,699; Morris U.S. Pat. No. 2,977,120; and Reach U.S. Pat. No. 676,771. In the devices disclosed in these patents, the weighted carriage itself has a pulley and is lifted by means of a cable trained around that and other pulleys, amounting to a traveling pulley system wherein only half the weight on the carriage is required as a pulling force to lift the carriage due to the mechanical advantage of the system. Accordingly, a relatively large stack of weights may be required to provide the requisite amount of resistance to exercise. An advantage of this system, however, is that a continous cable may be used extending from the upper pulley through the system to the lower pulley, with appropriate cable stops to anchor each end of the cable, so that virtually no reconfiguration of the equipment is required for changeover from an upper pulling machine to a lower pulling machine. However, as noted above, a large quantity of weight may be required for proper effort level.
Chesemore U.S. Pat. No. 3,840,227; Winans U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,431; Szkalak U.S. Pat. No. 4,390,179; and Mazman U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,599 disclose exercise devices wherein the stack of weights may be lifted by any one of a number of mechanisms, thereby affording a variety of exercises. In each of these devices, the weights themselves are lifted by a cable which is attached directly to the weighted carriage (without a traveling pulley), thereby applying the full load to the cable and minimizing the amount of weight required for a full range of exercise loads. In the Chesemore, Winans and Szkalak devices, however, a change from one lifting mechanism to another requires reconfiguration or reconnection of the cable or cables in different ways. In the Mazman device, the overhead cable arrangement must be reconnected when it is to be used or, if left connected with its overhead handle in place, will move when the alternate handle is used for exercises, resulting in a drop of the overhead cable-attached handle, possibly interfering with the exercise. If the overhead handle in the Mazman device were somehow immobilized, the resulting slack in the cable might cause it to foul with the other working parts of the apparatus.